The
Steam Forums have an update from Professor Pew, spokesperson for 4A Games,
and esteemed doctor of pew-pew, who explains the situation regarding
the
locked field of view in Metro: Last Light, their new shooter sequel
(thanks
Strategy Informer). It turns out the problem is that allowing adjustable FOV
would conflict with their 3D HUD (which arguably means the HUD should have been
reworked, rather than FOV locked). They are contemplating their options for a
long term fix, and in the meantime are planning a game update "in the next few
days" to allow players to adjust the FOV by directly editing CFG files, though
this will indeed mess with the HUD. Here's word:

We're aware the community
have been asking for a 'Field of View' slider for Metro: Last Light.
Unfortunately, this was not as simple a thing to implement as it might appear!

The main reason for maintaining a fixed FOV is because we have 3D elements like
the watch and weapon ammo that need to remain visible.

In addition, all the game's first-person cut scenes and cinematics and each and
every animation involving Artyom's hands - idle weapon animations, reloads,
ladder climbing, melee attacks etc, - were created assuming the same, fixed
field of view.

Changing the FOV would break all the cut-scenes and animations - you would be
able to see inside Artyom's arms, or they would appear to float in the air in
front of you. Or worse.

We had considered offering three FOV pre-sets, but this would still require
significant work to re-do every animation, adjust the HUD and UI and other
seemingly small but incredibly time consuming tasks.

Even with a wider but still fixed field of view, Artyom's hands would look too
far away. We know - we tried.

Game performance is also tied to FOV - the amount of geometric detail we put in
each scene has been partly determined by this set FOV, and setting a wider FOV
would have a performance impact.

We understand this issue is important to many people, and we have been looking
at possible solutions.

In the immediate term - the next title update, due in the next few days will
allow you to directly change the FOV in the .cfg files.

This may well trigger a number of issues listed above - you have been
warned!

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Metro LL is a FPAA (first person action adventure :P). It's not your typical shooter. In fact, I finished the game with hardly firing a shot. The game(world) is, however, very immersive and the story engaging. Because of 2 different endings dependent on certain decisions you have to make as Artyom, the game managed to pull me into him quite nicely.